Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Test-Duration Stress (TDS) is a popular phenomenon for college students during term exams and often make some detrimental impacts on performances and health of college students. Therefore, it is very important to examine the characteristics of Test-Duration Stress and explore the possible factors it resulted from. Two questionnaires, the Scale for Characteristics of Test-Duration Stress (SCTDS) and Scale for Factors of Test-Duration Stress (SFTDS), were specially designed and employed in the present study. Two hundred and sixty-one college students, 152 males and 109 females, were selected as subjects, who were 18 to 26 years of age including all four grade students. From the results of SCTDS evaluation, it was surprisingly found that totally one hundred and twenty-five subjects (high as 47.89 percent) showed some significant symptoms of Test-Duration Stress. The sleeping symptom was especially seen among them, and there were very significant differences in sleepless scores between the TDS group (4.932 ± 2.374) and the normal group (3.563 ± 2.431). There were also some great differences in other symptoms such as digestion, cognitive capacity, headache and immunity, which were all significant statistically. But all the symptoms were rarely affected by such variables as sex, specialty, grade, roles and personality except sex difference in headache symptom. Moreover, it was found that the Test-Duration Stress had some markedly time features. Fifty-two percent of TDS subjects had indicated obvious TDS symptoms early in the beginning of the test duration. This value had reached up to 78.4 percent in the middle of the test duration. Subjects emerged TDS symptoms at the end of the test duration occupied only 16.8 percent. Meanwhile, TDS symptoms had disappeared for 95.2 percent of TDS subjects soon after all exams ended, and only 4.8 percent of TDS subjects maintained their TDS symptoms more than one day after all the tests. Based on the factor analysis of SFTDS evaluation results, it was believed that the major factors resulted in the Test-Duration Stress were very complex, and could be attributed to three aspects. First was the college student’s cognition of the purpose of the test, which referred to fame, scholarship, job chance, expectations from family and teachers, and so on. Second was the college student’s cognition of content of the test, which involved with the use and difficulty of test contents. Third was life and learning environment. It was concluded that the Test-Duration Stress was common to college students, that it displayed significant sleepless symptoms and regular time features, and that it could be evoked by multiple causes.

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